Garden Notes for the Family Vegetable Garden: March

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March is a lovely month as we head towards the start of Autumn. It’s still warm and wet so plenty of growth still happening – as anyone with a lawn can tell you. I am happy to report that we are picking sweetcorn and harvesting tomatoes. We had several plantings of potatoes over the growing season and so been enjoying different harvest times of different varieties. Mounding up continues of our main crop Agria potatoes which are still my favourite. Over this month, the natural cycle of many of our vegetables will be coming to an end so you will be busy in the kitchen preserving and outside beginning the tidying up ready for winter. Keep an eye on the hedgerows for blackberries, hawthorn berries and apples for jellys and sauces.

Keep harvesting runner beans and once finished let the vines die back naturally to provide food for next season then use old vines as compost. It’s a good idea to have perennial runner beans in a permanent spot at the back of the garden somewhere as they will stay there for a few years. All other beans and peas can be cut back and dug into the soil to provide carbon and nitrogen for the leafy plants to follow in the Spring. Start sowing broad beans and peas that will also provide a green crop over winter for this bed.

Root crops will be growing well for winter eating. Thin February sown carrots at night when there is less chance of carrot fly attack. Thin beetroot seedlings. Feed and keep the water up to brassicas, celery and leeks. Keep an eye out for sources of animal manure and other compost materials to put on empty beds in preparation for the coming cold months. If you have a patch of ground that is not in use until spring then make that your compost bed and throw all your garden refuse on it, add some manure, blood and bone, a little lime, cover with straw and leave.